Archive for WTF moment

Every so often I read a cluster(f***) of stories that simultaneously has me shaking my head, mumbling "no words..." and screaming WTF!? Today is one of those times. There were more stories than I could list in the headline, so you get a bonus link. Suffice it to say, I need a Valium. Or at the very least, some Pepto Bismol with a chaser of Pinot.

Welcome to today's Moments of WTF. Let's start the show off with everyone's favorite fallen GOP star, Chris Christie:

...Washington Post columnist George Will wrote a column claiming that being a rape victim is now a “coveted status” that college women seek out. Will argued that complaints ofrape and sexual assualt on college campus were overblown. He also suggested that women claiming to be raped were “delusional.”

Pot. Kettle. Delusional. Speaking of which...

A George Will column about sexual assault, which received lots of criticism and caused one newspaper to drop the longtime syndicated conservative columnist, had all male editors, the Washington Post's Erik Wemple reported on Friday. (via TPM)

Okay, here we go, today's final WTF Department entry. There are plenty more where these came from, but there's only so much we can take in one sitting. This story involves the always-and-ever-vile and thankfully-former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL). Need a refresher course on this asshat? Here you go, scroll your hearts out. Via HuffPo:

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois), the outspoken, tea party-backed congressman who was ousted in 2012 after just one term in Congress, went on a Twitter rampage Thursday evening after being kicked off his own radio program for using racial slurs on-air. [...]

Walsh, by his own account, used several epithets during a discussion on the Redskins' controversial name, including the n-word."

Please link over for the details. In fact, link over to all the stories, because a snippet does not the whole story tell.

Rachel Maddow does her usually excellent job of sharing staggeringly jaw-dropping news that make us want to scream, "WTF?!" This time its about "constitutional Republican" and State Representative Mark Patterson, an admitted "attempted rapist." And hey! Conservative Congressman Raul Labrador vouches for this guy!

Did I mention he's part of the Ron Paul wing of the party?

To add fuel to this political grease fire, his website lies about his "accomplishments."

Please watch the entire video, because the excerpts don't include everything Maddow covered.

Take it away, Rachel:

His website described him as having been a student at the University of Southern California, having gone to USC. Turns out he never went to USC.

His website also described him as a petroleum engineer. Turns out he is not a petroleum engineer, he's not an engineer at all.

His website also described him as a professional bicyclist. He was not a professional bicyclist ...he had no professional license, even though he did ride a bike...

Now, though, comes the dark part of this story, which is that Republican State Representative Mark Patterson, it turns out, has twice been arrested and charged with forcible rape.

One of those times in Ohio, he was acquitted. He was found not guilty of those charges. But the other time he was arrested and charged with rape he plead guilty. He plead guilty specifically to assault with intent to commit rape.

He did some time in jail and did some probation, and because of the probation sentence and the plea bargain that went along with it, under Florida law, this all happened in Tampa, Florida, this went down on Mark Patterson's record as a withheld judgment on the assault to intent rape charge.

So fast forward to 2007 and across the country to Idaho. And in 2007, soon-to-be State Representative Mark Patterson applies for a license to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Idaho.

He presumably does not mention on his application the rape issue in his past, since Idaho law says you can't get a concealed weapons permit if you have committed a, say, assault with intent to commit a serious felony, like for example, rape. So apparently he didn't mention that on his application in 2007 or presumably again on his application in 2012.

His past rape charge, his guilty plea means, he should have been turned down when he applied for a concealed weapons permit. And so now, the Idaho sheriff to whom he has applied for the gun permit has revoked the permit, saying basically having a violent felony on your record means you can't have a weapons permit. And you certainly can't lie about your violent felony record in order to get a weapons permit.

This is not a hard call, right? ...That one time you plead guilty to assault with forcible rape, that means you can't have concealed weapons anywhere. Even if you are a newly elected state representative. Who knows why he was able to get away with lying on that application once, and at least for awhile on his second try, too. But eventually the sheriff in Ada County, Idaho, found him out...

In any normal world, this is the part where the guy steps down to spend more time with his family. But because this is not a normal world... because this is our world now, the rape charges Republican lawmaker caught lying about it on his gun application has launched a counter attack, saying this is all just a trumped up bit of police retaliation for some legislation he sponsored, because he is the guy responsible for the legislation that would have put the cops in jail if Idaho law enforcement officers attempted to enforce federal gun laws in the state of Idaho.

He says because he sponsored that legislation, this whole ruckus now is just The Man coming for him and his guns in retaliation. That sheriff that discovered my rape conviction was, he says, "angry about being exposed as an opponent of the Second Amendment"...

...Do you want to know what the resolution is to the story of the Republican state representative who it turns out was charged with forcible rape twice, and who plead guilty to assault with intent to rape, and then lied about it on his gun permit application twice, and then got caught lying about it by the local sheriff, do you want to know how this story ends?

The guy gets to keeps his guns.

He gets to keep his concealed carry permit.

After all, even though, you know, right! And lying about it. Even though guilty plea to a violent felony, he gets to to keep the guns and keep the concealed weapons permit, because, turns out there is a state law that says if you're an elected official in Idaho, one of 3,000 elected officials in Idaho, at every level down to dog catcher, if you're an elected official in Idaho, there is a state law that says the legal requirements for getting a gun permit in that state don't apply to you....

...This country became the place where the response by law to the violence attempted rapist elected official who lied about it and who got caught lying about it, the only legal response to that man is, "Sorry, sir. Here is your gun, here is your gun, sir, here is your concealed weapons permit. Really sorry for the inconvenience."

That is the only possible legal response to the guy who plead guilty to assault with attempt to rape: "Sorry, sir, here is your gun."

True to form, the recipients of gigantic bonuses just can't get enough, despite the fact that they nearly destroyed our financial system trying. Of course, they didn't mind accepting bailout money either. *Yawn, stretch*... millions and billions in bailouts and bonuses, it's all in an hour's work.

All this while the rest of us have been struggling to make ends meet. It may be time for Occupy Wall Street to re-occupy.

Benmosche was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and popped out with this gem, via Think Progress:

“Now you have these bright young people [in the financial-products unit] who had nothing to do with [the bad bets that hurt the company.] … They understand the derivatives very well; they understand the complexity. … They’re all scared. They [had made] good livings. They probably lived beyond their means. …They aren’t going to stay there for nothing.

The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that–sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.

He then sworetogod that he really didn't intend to offend anyone. Honest!

Why, who would possibly be offended by the suggestion that lynching African-Americans in the Deep South and being criticized for maintaining the lifestyle of the rich and infamous are analogous? I mean besides anyone with an ounce of self-awareness and decency.

That concludes today's WTF Moment, and thank you for playing "Really Bad Analogies."

This typifies the frustration so many of us are feeling from afar, watching this slo-mo train wreck happen before our own very eyes. Get your act together, Wisconsin Dems, or you have nobody to blame but yourselves if you don't get out the vote in a huge way and finally show Scotty the door.

Two prominent Wisconsin pollsters say Gov. Scott Walker, on the verge of his re-election bid, appears to have relatively stable poll numbers and the advantages of incumbency.

But Paul Maslin of FM3 and Charles Franklin of the Marquette Law School also told the audience at a WisPolitics.com luncheon this week that his advantage could change -- and not simply because Dems have yet to fully get behind a single candidate.

Maslin, a Madison-based Dem pollster, conceded Walker is the favorite with nearly 14 months before the 2014 election, noting he's already won his office twice.

But he also argued the guv is "absolutely" vulnerable on economic issues, saying he hasn't delivered on his 250,000 jobs pledge and that the state is largely underperforming in the Midwest.